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Today’s blog was supposed to be about packing for my upcoming trip (during which I’ll get to blog on location in real time!), but I got bored by my own words before they even made it to print. Maybe I’m just too wired to focus.  So as an escape from all the stress that builds before any trip I take, I think I’ll just share some pictures from the last time I visited Ha Long Bay in northern Vietnam. Thinking about its jade colored water and fantasy-like limestone monolithic islands has a way of calming me down. Actually, it would take a few blogs to share all of the pictures I have of this incredible place, but in the spirit of preparing for my trip across the Atlantic, I’ll just show photos I took from the overnight junket as we proceeded to enter the Bay.

I’d booked this “cruise” from my hotel (though I found out later that I could have done it less expensively had I walked around the corner to a local tour company) after breakfast and the next day was picked up in Hanoi for the ride to the dock:

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Luckily the tour was not full so I almost felt like I was on my own private yacht…

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I got to roam around the “top deck,”

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lounge around for a bit,

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and choose a room of my liking…

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OK, so it wasn’t the Four Seasons, but for me, so long as there’s a private bath and things are clean, I can cope.  Truth is, when you are in nature’s paradise, what is there to complain about?

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We passed by a few floating communities and I was humbled by how simply people lived.

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A family on a tiny boat…houses cramped with multigenerational families.  I’ll have to tell you about a family I did get to meet after I kayaked from the boat to their floating home–but that’s for another blog. Look closely at this next picture. Yes, there are two pairs of legs you see there:

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Ha Long Bay or Descending Dragon Bay took on full meaning when we sailed by this island:

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Everyone on the boat stopped talking the minute it came into the view. Our captain slowed down the boat and we all stood in silence as the sun shimmied itself to rest over the limestone formations.  Just as the sun closed its eyes, I heard the waves hit against the sides of our boat, in a sweet rocking motion.  If this had been the last thing I could see with my own two eyes,  I would have been very lucky indeed:

 

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